Homeowners, industrial property owners, commercial property owners, and other property managers often have to deal with property pests. Generally, a pest is any organism detrimental to humans or human concerns. For purposes of this application, a “property pest” is an organism that is or can be detrimental to property including personal property (e.g., products) or real estate property (e.g., land or structures). Property pests include pests that cause damage to wooden products or wooden structures, pests that invade property, parasite pests, and pest vectors of disease.
Certain embodiments of the present invention are configured to reduce pests that cause damage to wooden products or wooden structures. Examples of such pests include termites such as subterranean termites, drywood termites, and dampwood termites, silverfish, woodworms, carpenter ants, red imported ants, carpenter bees, wood-eating cockroaches, and powderpost beetles. For purposes of this application, pests that cause harm to wood products or wooden structures are termed “wood-targeting pests”. For purposes of this application, the naturally occurring wood plants, wood products, or wood structures that a wood-targeting pest may harm are collectively termed a “wood target”.
Also, for purposes of this application, the present invention is discussed in reference to termites, but the discussion is merely exemplary. The present invention is applicable to any wood-targeting pests.
Many wood-targeting pests live in colonies. Colony members may be divided into castes, and each caste is responsible for a certain division of labor for the colony. For example, termites may include a reproductive caste, worker caste, and soldier caste. The reproductive caste may include a queen termite, king termite, or other supplementary reproductive members. The worker termites build and maintain the nest of the colony, care for the young termites, leave the nest to find food, store food, and may do some nest defense tasks. The soldier termites defend the nest against attack, possibly by ants.
Termites and other wood-targeting pests can cause massive damage to property products and property structures. People spend billions of dollars every year to control wood-targeting pests and to mitigate damage done by such pests. Accordingly, many apparatuses and approaches for decreasing the damage of the wood-targeting pests have been developed. However, such currently available apparatuses are associated with certain disadvantages.
One approach designed to address wood-targeting pests includes what is called “barrier approach”, in which a liquid termiticide is applied, sometimes, by drilling into the soil, drywall, concrete slabs, or other potential points of entry for wood-targeting pests. Examples of termiticide include sulfuramid, diflubenzuron, noviflumuron, and hydramethylnon. While this approach may be effective in certain situations, if the termiticide does not sufficiently penetrate into the surfaces around the point of entry, the termites may circumvent the termiticide. In addition, a property owner may not wish to use the termiticide approach if the property includes a well, cistern, nearby pond or stream, plenums, sub-slab heating ducts, drainage systems, crawl spaces, or other underground features because the termiticide may contaminate such areas. In addition, a property owner may not wish to have holes drilled into the property structure.
Another approach for decreasing damage by wood-targeting pests, which does not require, though may be used in conjunction with the barrier approach, is a baiting approach. Such a baiting approach includes using a baiting apparatus which includes bait to attract, for example, termites to the apparatus. Examples of bait may include natural wood products, processed cellulosic products, or other synthetic products that a termite may eat. Instead of damaging a wood target, the termites damage the wooden bait in the baiting apparatus instead. However, even though such apparatuses redirect the termites away from the wood target for a period of time, the apparatus also provides food for the termites and possibly bolsters the colony of termites.
To overcome this limitation, certain baits have been impregnated with a pesticide, for example, a termiticide. Certain chemical pesticides or termiticides kill the termite before it can return to the colony. Clearly, such chemical pesticides or termiticides are limited in value since some wood-targeting pests never leave the colony, and accordingly, will never be susceptible to such pesticides.
Other chemical pesticides used in a baiting apparatus are configured to kill the termites slowly such that the worker termites can ingest the pesticide, carry it back to the colony, and feed it to the other termites in the colony.
Additional embodiments of bait apparatuses include a feeding stimulant or attractant to improve the attractiveness of the bait apparatus to a worker termite. Adding a stimulant or attractant is valuable because the success of a baiting apparatus is dependent upon a termite finding and consuming the bait food source. Typically, worker termites have very few visual capabilities and, in order to locate food sources, rely on a sense of touch and chemical signals to help them locate food. Examples of feeding stimulants or attractants include sugar, wheat-germ, bran, and other natural products. However, such attractants often appeal to a broad range of insects and organisms and are not limited to attracting termites or other wood-targeting pests.
One attractant directed to enticing termites specifically is a wood-decaying fungus, such as brown-rot known as Lenzites trabea or Gloeophyllum trabeum. Such fungus causes decay of the bait wood, and, in the early stages of decay, termites are drawn to the bait wood. A metabolite extracted from the brown-rot decaying wood also may be used as an attractant. However, such attractants may be limited in range of effectiveness, especially if the bait apparatus is positioned in the soil. In addition, certain types of termites, specifically, the highly destructive Coptotermes termites, are only attracted to the brown-rot decaying wood in the early stages of decay, but not overly decayed wood.
While certain other bait apparatuses have attempted to use other types of fungi—e.g., white-rot and soft-rot fungi—as an attractant, research shows that some of these fungi actually repel the termites, thereby undermining the desired effect.
Another disadvantage of using wood decay-causing fungi in a bait apparatus is that the wood decay-causing fungi may be released from the bait apparatus. Upon release, the wood decay-causing fungi could possibly infect non-bait wood, such as man-made wood products or wood structures, trees, bushes, or other natural wood organisms. Such spread of the decay not only threatens the non-bait wood, but also may attract termites to those objects as well, and accordingly, only worsen the threats to the wood targets and natural wood objects.
Clearly, there is a demand for an improved bait and attractant configured specifically to attract wood-targeting pests that have a long-lasting effect without threatening nearby wood-based objects. The present invention satisfies this demand.